Call for Papers: Robotisation, automatisation, the end of work and the future of education

2018-01-25

Focus editors: Slavko Gaber & Veronika Tašner

Numerous changes have come to the fore in society in recent years, and it seems that we are actually close to a radical shift in the leading rationality of our societies.

One of the most significant changes is the automatisation and robotisation of wage labour, as well as a number of other activities in our lives. Studies (Osborne and Frey; Ford, Rifkin, Collins, etc.) point to the rapid and decisive role that both of these factors play in shaping the future of labour markets of capitalist societies, as well as their impact on the ways of life in our capitalist and post-capitalist societies in the near future.

While we concur with Durkheim’s claim that education in society is closely related to the main modalities of the functioning of each society (its ways of life and production), it seems likely that education will, in the next few decades, adapt to the aforementioned shift beyond the logic of wage labour as the leading idea structuring societies.

On this background, the focus of our special issue of CEPS Journal in 2019 aims to bring together a set of contributions that examine the shift in the rationalities of our societies beyond the still prevailing relationship between wage labour and market economies and education, as well as examining in this light the necessary and already emerging new types of rationalities in societies and education around the world.

The topics we are particularly interested in seeing considered are those covering:

dilemmas and shifts in educational curricula and their reform related to the aforementioned economic transition from market economies to hybrid economies (Őstrom, Altman; Rifkin; Castells);

questions related to equality and education in the shifting rationale of education;

the new role of educational institutions and teachers in societies with a shorter working week and more free time due to work being executed by smart technology and the next generations of robots.

Let us conclude with a provocative question: “What if, in the future, robots and new technologies replace the majority of teachers?”